MovieChat Forums > Ghost in the Shell (2017) Discussion > Superficial story out of semi-coherence ...

Superficial story out of semi-coherence bred out of episodic storyless world

posted 6 months ago by avortac4 (3746)
7 replies | jump to latest

These things - the whole 'GitS'-phenomenon - are pretty interesting. Not in that there's anything all that interesting philosophically or storywise in any of this stuff per se, but because of how different every 'iteration' is. It's almost as if there's nothing of substance there to grasp, so every attempt at doing so ends up as some kind of installation kitchen-philosophy-based 'interpretation' some visionless hack thought it must 'be all about'.

Ghost in the Shell - which would actually originally not even be about any 'ghosts', but about a 'policelike force', really, just a goofy bruteforce group that does stuff for an oppressive and cruel government - has so much 'stuff', including 'cyberpunkish future-pr0n' and 'cool glitter', that it's easy to make movies, TV shows and even a comic about it.

But what is it all about?

What is the core message, plot point, story it tries to tell us?

We know the main character is some goofy but talented 'typical manga tough girl, but this time, it's a cyborg', but we don't know why.

The first episode is extremely short in the manga, and raises more questions than it answers.

This movie doesn't get the 1995 movie, which doesn't really reflect the world, the 'story' (such as it is), the values, the humor, the visual style, or even the world (let alone tone) of the manga, which doesn't really give the reader much of anything of a 'story' to grasp.

The manga simply vomits all kinds of complicated and complex (to 'understand' the manga, you have to be the type to clearly understand the difference between these two words) to the reader's face until their brain can't handle more input, then paints it all 'cool futuristic world with all kinds of made-up silly tech' and then installs a few typical, boring, annoying clichés on top and calls it a day.

Of course it's done with a fluctuating tone - sometimes 'cybercool', sometimes 'super silly and goofy', sometimes 'super gory and violent', and OF COURSE peppers it throughout with fanservice with 'sexy buttocks-shots' and such, not to mention it rationalizes and excuses having actual pr0n scenes in it just to keep the reader's interest. Can't have a 'cool futuristic story' without some ACTUAL PR0N in it, because we don't trust our story to be interesting enough to hold the viewer's interest..?

In any case, the manga author seems to be more interested in gratuitous visual shots, building a 'super-technological cyberpunk world', coming up with silly excuses for worse-than-TNG-technobabble, while featuring 'cute manga chicks of all kinds' and pushing useless humor so much you don't know what to think when you try to find some kind of story in this thing, than actually... you know.. telling a coherent story.

It's basically a 'here's a jumbled mess of all kinds of material, try to jiggsaw some kind of story out of this'-stuff.

I might be wrong, but I think the 1995 movie implies the Major is an individual that does stupid things that always gets its body destroyed so it's always rebuilt, whileas the manga does not even imply that the curiously blue-haired (the next time we see Major, which is said to be an ALIAS?!, and there to be MULTIPLE of them??, she has BROWN hair!) assassin actually fell to the ground, but simply 'escaped'.

The more I read the very short first episode, the more confused I am, and the less cohesiveness that particular episode, as 'cool' as it looks to be, has with any of the other episodes. The 'apeface' seems to try to CATCH Major and she escapes in that one, but somehow she suddenly works for him?

What I am trying to say is, there was NEVER any kind of proper story in the manga to begin with. You can say I am just an idiot who can't understand how complicated this techno-political, bureaucratic, deep, layered and involved story is, but I am saying this is a PERFECT example of the Naked Emperor; there is a 'world', there are very complex things happening, lots and lots of story elements - but the actual story? Where is it?

Masamune-san seems to be more interested in building worlds, inventing 'futuristic tech', drawing 'cool scenes' and 'sexy chicks', robots and humoristic scenes than making any kind of actual story out of it. Every episode seems to be almost completely independent thing that does not add to the story (that doesn't exist anyway), doesn't push the story forward, etc. If you want to know 'what happened and why', you will be disappointed, because in the end, 'things just happen in a very detailed and somewhat silly world'.

The 1995 removes most of the humor and 'fan service', makes characters less goofy and reactive, makes the tone super serious, and then just grabs pieces here and there to try to glue them into some kind of coherent story and narrative. It succeeds in some ways, but even with the anime movie, you are left off wondering what happened and why - is this it? Major just switches to a different body and the movie ends with her pondering where to go?

[–] avortac4 (3746) 6 months ago

It's almost as if nothing that happened previously even matters at all.

So, the 'bad guys' got their due justice, but their motivations remained a bit hazy.

The 'good guys' were not fully good, but there were some 'cool fight scenes' that ended in weird ways.

The world showed its disturbing and depressing sides, while also showcasing its efficiency when it comes to governmental power. Some internal sections fought for tech and AI took over some stuff, but in the end, for most people that live in that world, 'nothing happened'.

Of course people that love to feel 'smart' always mouth-foamingly point to the pseudo-kitchen-philosophy, or 'philosophy', such as it is, about 'can cyborg feel loooove'.. I mean, 'what does it mean to be human', which has to be the most tired and clichéic way of dumbing down the masses into thinking 'digital humans are just as good as organic ones', because all they see is the physical side.

Why is it that every futuristic story has to be about 'robots have feelz too, robots are humans, too, robots have souls, too!!11'?

I have seen this in TNG with Data and his 'child' (so stupid), I have seen this in 'Armitage', GitS, The Matrix and so on.

No one seems to make the realization that hey, even a robot needs a soul to actually have a soul. They just think (and say this even in the manga) that if something is complicated enough, it must have a soul (SOMEHOW)..

It's so stupid.

A.I. can't make a decision, ever. I mean, by itself, if there was such a thing as 'Artificial Intelligence' (there isn't - we just use that term for pragmatic purposes, but there's no ACTUAL INTELLIGENCE there), it would not DO anything it's not specifically programmed to do. Even if it has the 'capability of self-programmign and improvement', it would not do it, because computer programs don't really 'do' anything they are not specifically programmed to do. Just because something can do it, doesn't mean it will.

[–] avortac4 (3746) 6 months ago

A Terminator is not a cyborg, it's still a robot even if you cover it with 'synthetic flesh'.

Would a chicken turn into a dog just because you wrap it inside the corpse of a dead dog? No, it's still a chicken. A robot does not become something else no matter WHAT you wrap it in. A Cyborg would need 'biological, living parts' TO FUNCTION at all.

What I am trying to point out here, is that writers are stupid and don't understand these 'big concepts' at all. They don't know what life is, so they decide that enough zeroes and ones IS life (SOMEHOW). Picard is impressed by 'smart toasters', basically, and grants them 'human rights' and then downgrades ACTUAL human beings by insultingly judging them as 'biological machines'. Now, biological robots DO exist, but they do not have a soul any more than mechanical or electricity-based robots.

No matter how 'gruesomely' you depict 'robots being murdered', I am not buying it, because those things are no different than computers. Sure, I feel sad if I see someone hammer to pieces a perfectly functional Sega Dreamcast, but I am not going to think the console feels pain or is 'tortured' or anything like that.

It's just a waste of good technology, that's all.

Saying someone has a soul just because it has 'enough neuropathways', is akin to saying you will get wet if we put enough plastic h2o-molecule shapes in a pool and you jump in, or saying that a thousand monkeys would eventually end up writing Shakespeare. Well, you don't and they won't - we've had millions of monkeylike cretins pounding on all kinds of keyboards for decades now, and the closest thing to shakespeare we have is 'skibidi sigma wuz lol sup ur mom'.

(This is the family-friendly, mild version)

[–] avortac4 (3746) 6 months ago

So the original manga is a storyless incoherent mess, where the author just wants to build more and more without caring about story, then adds 'political complexity' and 'cool visuals' to mask the emptiness. The 1995 movie tries to pick parts of it to glue them together into SOME kind of a 'narrative' that still makes you feel at the end like you didn't quite get a payoff for enduring all those dull, meaningless moments, and wading through all that crappy, faulty, superficial 'kitchen-philosophy' about 'artificial life' (a literal and absolute contradiction in terms, forever. There can't BE artificial life, ever.)

Now, a soul CAN incarnate into all kinds of bodies (which are not necessarily bipedal), including 'electricity-based ones' (as our most common type on this planet has historically been a 'water-based one' - why anyone would think these bodies are CARBON-based, is beyond me).

For some reason, NONE of these 'thought-provoking, mind-blowing' stories/movies/etc. dare to show us THAT kind of story. Wouldn't it be more interesting to have robots that HAVE souls and then identical-looking robots that do NOT have souls in them?

What a wasted opportunity for so many movies, TV shows, mangas and so on, and they keep making this trope instead of the more soulful one. They do anything to keep the word 'soul' out of it, calling them 'ghosts' and saying zeroes and ones become just as good humans as divine-created ones (what an insult to the Creator!), and keep this physical-only nihilistic view about it every time.

Any time they mention a 'soul' is when they boast how complex something is, so it must have a 'soul' somehow.

No.

Data has no soul. Lore has no soul. Data's 'daughter' (you are not a father by MANUFACTURING something, but also, because you are a damn machine, a computer can't be a father) has no soul and does not feel. Agent Smith has no soul.

Fuchikomas have no souls.

[–] avortac4 (3746) 6 months ago

Also, taking someone's brain and putting it in some body does not mean the human now lives in that body. A brain is not mind, a brain is not soul, and a brain is not even fully physical (its functions are spread throughout the different frequencies inbetween the physical and the soul, including etheric and astral planes).

I keep waiting for these 'body switch'-stories to at least have the decency to utilize the silver cord and all that we know about meridians, chakras, acu-points and planes, but it never is that. They never transfer your soul from one body to another, they just .. switch brains. It's so stupid, but people praise this stuff, because they have been indoctrinated to be nihilistic.

The Universe is magical, full of energy, dimensions and all kinds of beauty.

Why must all 'creative works' always forget that and work purely from a materialistic-nihilistic worldview that doesn't allow an actual soul, which is the REAL distinction between humans and non-humans?

I don't care if someone's body is fully metallic, if there is an incarnated soul in there. These movies are full of BODY-shaming, because body seems to be all that matters - but the soul doesn't even enter into it.

Why should I care if your body has a cybernoidic brain, if your soul is still the human I like spending time with, and it's incarnated in that body that has that brain? What do I care if your body is robotic or organic, if you are an actual human inside that body? Heck, even if you remote-operate a robotic body as a human being, it's still better than pure A.I. that has no soul.

When people fight 'robots' (for some reason angrily), they should realize they're body-shaming. Nothing wrong with robot body, the problem is when people think A.I. is the same as soul. Zeroes and ones are never comparable to a divine creation, which is what life is. Artificial Life can't exist, because people (or machines) can't create life.

A newborn is neither NEW nor BORN, just BTW.

[–] avortac4 (3746) 6 months ago

So to cut a long story short (TOO LATE!), this movie is your typicall hollyweird-reduction of a superficial attempt at exploiting an incoherent mess with lots of detail and worldbuilding without much of a story, into a nihilistic, preachy, dull in its tired, typical, nihilistic, boring kitchen-philosophy-vessel to dull the masses into accepting that A.I. is just as 'alive' as a divine-created human beings (soul is the human, not the body, just BTW) into a semi-coherent almost-story with unsatisfying WTF-type ending..

..by adding unnecessarily fancy camera movements and visual effects, but removing the detail and worldbuilding that made the 1995-version have at least some kind of a point, so this movie doesn't even work on any kind of level the previous thing sort of does (not that the 1995 movie gives the viewer much beyond 'cool visuals' and 'very deep philosophy if you are in a four-year old organic body' besides some worldbuilding and a couple of interesting scenes and some neat-ish music).

This is one unmemorable grain of irrelevance in the long line of 'movies and stories that hollyweird didn't understand and thus completely simplified, twisted and butchered into something they were never meant to be'.

Nothing new to see here..

One congruence this movie expresses well, is that whenever hollyweird takes something colorful, beautiful or interesting-looking, it makes it dull, colorless and boring to watch, while still trying very hard to make it have 'visually cool scenes' (it doesn't seem to make much sense, but neither do remakes/reboots). The Little Mermaid is also very dark and hard-to-see and dullifies everything that was colorful and 'magical' about the original.

[–] cv1cv (470) 6 months ago

BEWARE! Avortac4 is a troll trying to waste everyone's time with such idiotic comments. Look at his posts. He doesn't think anything in any film makes sense. His post may seem like it makes sense in the first sentence or two. But he always quickly wanders off into a completely idiotic idea, and then writes a wall of text that makes no sense. And his sole purpose is to waste your time, thinking he's cute for doing so. Don't feed the troll. If you write a comment, you're giving this troll EXACTLY what he wants. Don't comment after my comment.

[–] 123Guy (7380) 6 months ago

MODS: please block these senselessly noisy AI bots from posting this endless nonsense